Gygax Time Machine, Part 3: Player Skill and Character Death

Let me summarise what happened over the first few (amalgamated) sessions-worth of play. We’re playing T1-4. The characters mentioned in the previous post - Prince Perithil of the Amber Wood (High Elf Thief), Kurgan Ironbreath (Dwarf Cleric), Gilayra (Half-Elf Druid), Gragnak (Half-Orc Fighter), Throli (Dwarf Fighter), Eldarion (Half-Elf Magic-User), and Timtom (Human Thief) – arrived in Hommlet and looked for leads on the rumours of bandits. They picked up that they might be at Lance Rock (to the north; a location taken from the 5e ToEE-remake) or somewhere near Nulb, but no-one really knew.

So my wife decided to head to Nulb. After a quiet journey (using the T1 and T1-4 rough stated distances, rather than the bizarrely discrepant map), they arrived, and nosed around different buildings – the Waterside Hostel, the Smithy, and the Docks. At the Smithy, Otis the Smith (one of Luke Gygax’s characters, I believe) worked out they were a well-intentioned party, and without tipping his hand, received them courteously and advised them to offer their service to Burne or Jaroo back in Hommlet. They also were asked by the fisherman Doozle at the Docks to hunt down a Giant Gar and give it to him so he could pretend to have caught it. In return, he’d give them a Ring of Water Walking. (My wife wisely got him to demonstrate that it worked.)

Enchanted by the idea of hunting down a big fish, my wife chose to stay long enough to hunt the Giant Gar, and then have the party head back to Hommlet.

EXCURSUS ONE: I added “Side Trek” material to both Hommlet and Nulb – the most palpable lack in T1-4 is not, to me, the incomplete and messy Nodes, but material that will actually level characters up to, say, 3^rd level before they really storm the Temple depths. I drew this material chiefly from the ToEE video game, plus one location from 5e’s Princes of the Apocalypse, and one idea from a Dragonsfoot post.

EXCURSUS TWO: Though I have “my” character sheets in front of me for admin, my wife is making all the decisions; in that sense it’s a solo campaign, but with the admin of a normal-sized party split between us. I also took the liberty here of advising on a pre-combat plan.

The plan was this: take a day to rest to swap spells (well, 4 hours were needed, but it was early evening already), and then hire some boats to row down the Imryds Run. When approaching the wide side channel where the Giant Gar lived, the Druid would ping up Locate Animals and the Cleric would start casting Bless. Once the Gar was identified, the Druid would Faerie Fire the Gar and the Magic-User would cast Reduce, with the fighters protecting the casters. Then missile fire would begin.

It was a good plan, and it so nearly worked. The Gar had 40hp and did 5d4 damage, but losing 20% of that meant it had 32hp and did 4d4 damage (which is still horrendous vs 1^st Level characters, but theoretically a tough fighter can survive a median hit). The Faerie Fire and Bless meant the core damage-dealers were running at +3 to hit.

What got in the way was a comparatively predictable perfect storm of luck in the first combat round: Initiative was tied, the Gar got a hit in on the Half-Orc Fighter straight up and took him down – the PCs were waiting for Faerie Fire - and basically nobody did much damage (I think there was 1 out of 6 hits; the Gar is AC3, functionally AC6 from bonuses, so not unhittable, but the PCs hit the rear slope of the bell curve Round 1). Next round the Gar won initiative. I think the Magic-User went down, killed outright (counting a hit taking someone beyond -3 as instadeath, though there’s debate on the interpretation of that bit in the DMG). There was some more damage dealt, and the decision was made to stick in one more round. This time the PCs won initiative, a bit more damage was done, the Cleric was killed, and the retreat was sounded – the Thieves returned to rowing, guarded by the Dwarf Fighter and the Druid. In the final round, as the boat sought to get out of the channel, the Gar won the Initiative, took down the Dwarf Fighter (unconscious), but was reduced to 4hp.

Of course the PCs didn’t know that – they knew they had done 28hp of damage and the Gar looked weak, but also knew 2 of their cohort had died and another 2 were dying (at -1hp per round, dying at -10), so they reluctantly got out of Dodge.

I found running the combat fine, though realized I actually really wanted to run it on grid paper. I’ve since had some combat training from Anthony Huso (of The Blue Bard blog and Night Wolf Inn), which has made the timing issue clearer. Timing is plainly the fiddliest thing in 1e combat; most of the actions are simple enough, and even time *costs* aren’t too complicated in any situation, but administering the timing of a round, and identifying where potential “bonus” actions can come up, is more of a stretch.

I thought the combat told a good story – a very good plan nearly took down a beast much too powerful for the PCs, and with a tiny bit more luck (what if the Gar had done 4 damage vs Gragnak and the big Half-Orc had done 4 damage that first round?) they would have won a famous early victory. Alas, they have lost two friends and had to leave another two with Otis and his friend Mother Screng in Nulb, whilst they returned to Hommlet fairly chastened. 1e rewards good play, but it is ruthless. The result was not unfair, with the good planning merely mitigating the poor strategic decision made.

The PCs are going to need a bigger boat.

EXCURSUS THREE: I wasn’t overly gentle with the Gar, but I did decide to forego calculating if anyone fell out of the boat etc, for the sake of convenience whilst I was also learning rules. I also wasn’t sure if the Reduction (or indeed the Bless) would end when its caster went down – they’re not Concentration spells, to use a 5e term, where Chant is, so it seemed to me like they would continue, but it’s a niggle. Any errata appreciated.

Gary Gygax: Lost Talent?

It’s strange to talk of Gary Gygax as a “lost talent” of roleplaying games. Indeed, looked at from one direction, it’s absurd. This is because there are two Gary Gygaxes to consider when it comes to writing for roleplaying games: there is Gary The Systems Wizard, and Gary The Module Designer. In the former role Gygax is the most important game designer in any format in the modern era; in the latter, he is the original and in many ways the best, but still, somehow, frustratingly elusive.

In terms of systems design – both in terms of mechanics but also theme – Gary is unsurpassed in roleplaying games. OD&D and 1^st Edition are not outdated experiments, improved by experience; they are a vision of the game. Though Dave Arneson is (quite properly) credited on the front of the OD&D little books, it doesn’t take a consulting detective to see the particular thread of genius that runs from Chainmail, through OD&D, culminating in the 1^st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. When one hears Dave’s players talk of his campaign (with enormous affection), one can hear a different, alternative vision of D&D – that never quite was. Dave’s 3-4 published modules for OD&D and AD&D are interesting, quixotic, and often fun, but they are not the peak of the mountain – and though we have him to thank for the Illusionist and Assassin, we shouldn’t look to him for a coherent mechanical execution of them.

No – it was Gary who loved the eponymous Dungeon. It was Gary who mashed together the influences that determined the classes and races of the Player’s Handbook, and of the array of beasties in the various Monster Manuals – not just his two, but also the Fiend Folio and Deities and Demigods. The legally troublesome inclusion of the Cthulhu Mythos in the latter book fits a game with the Elder Elemental Eye spreading its tentacles across multiple series of modules. It was Gary who created the “dense and deep” mechanics of 1e – where, as Anthony Huso of the Blue Bard puts it, rolls often determine in one number both the QUALITY but also the QUANTITY of the result; where detailed information about hiring small armies is given; where seemingly absurd subchapters on aerial and waterborne combat are provided – absurd until those situations inevitably arise! There is a scope of vision and deep gaming wisdom on show in the 1^st Edition books by Gary, especially, of course, the DMG. And I need say nothing of the scope of his cultural influence – in many ways sparring with Lord of the Rings as the key Western fantasy influence, whether conscious or not, of our times.

But it is as module designer that I want to lament something lost. My basic contention is this: though Gary’s module designing career (for D&D – see postscript) needs no justification or defence, it is reasonable for the fan to identify the pattern of drama and partial failure in his “prestige” modules, and wonder what happened.

The point I make about “no justification or defence” being required is salient: Gary designed B2 and T1 (for starting parties), WG4 and S4 (for mid-level parties), S3, G1-3, and D1-3 (for high level parties), and S1 (for the very crème de la crème). That is a catalogue of modules which brooks no comparison. There were some other early designers with multiple real successes under their belt (Zeb Cook, Douglas Niles, Tom Moldvay, and even Tracy Hickman come to mind, as does the UK team), but I’ve just listed 12 modules of the highest quality, and I can think of at least 8 other modules (by one calculation) bearing his name that came out during 1^st Edition. So what’s the problem? He designed the key modules at every party level, and is by any measure the most prolific great designer in D&D history. (On top of those previously mentioned, I might add Jaquays, Smedman, Wetmore, Huso, Lux, Kutalik, and others...but none are as prolific as Gygax was in a single decade of work.)

The problem is, of course, what should have been the crowning glories of his career are, to lesser or greater degree, failures. T2(-4), the megadungeon promised by the iconic T1, is clearly actually keyed and planned by Gary, but the finish is Mentzer – workmanlike, respectable, but pedestrian. Q1, the great planar adventure to finished off the G and D series, was written by Gary’s favourite artist (?!) in lieu of him, with the Dungeon Master himself only carrying a co-credit – and it’s not a well-loved module. Castle Greyhawk, Gary’s own campaign-in-a-box city-and-megadungeon, never truly came out in D&D colours – with a bizarre parody released not longer after he left TSR, and then a later, more respectable tribute act by some of his friends. So his two megadungeons, his campaign-in-a-box, and his planar adventure – the things that really sum up his table and/or his aspirations – never came out in adequate form. He put in stellar performances on the minor forms of the art, from starting modules to weird diversions with aliens to base assaults on the mighty, but never quite stuck the landing on the big moves.

Why? Well, some think it’s more or less the yips – Gary didn’t want to finish them. They were beyond his creative capacity. The same people often think nothing could have been (or could now be) released that would satisfy, given the legend attached to Castle Greyhawk, particularly. I disagree syrongly on both points. The reason those modules weren’t finished to his usual standards was simple busyness (as often reported). With so few people at the company in the early days, and Gary prone to getting involved in just about everything – including a bizarre, lengthy essay in Dragon ranting about how he hated Origins – he didn’t discipline himself to the task of completing those big, rambling modules. The co-authorships give the game away: T2 and Q1 became white whales for Gary not because of artistic angst (I find no trace of that in any of his work, even as he experienced professional angst) but because he was too busy and so dumped the work on other people.

I also disagree that, at this point, nothing could possibly satisfy. I don’t think anyone could honestly read any of the great Gygax modules and think that if – somehow – a fully polished, signed in his own hand, 1980-vintage Castle Greyhawk came out, that it wouldn’t instantly be one of the best modules ever written. Sometimes, things do live up to expectation - the reputation of S1 or G1-3 does not stop them being magnificent. Even minor flaws cannot take the lustre off B2 or T1. CG1-10, a true T2-4, a Gygax Planar Adventure to replace Q1 – these would all be about as good as ever wanted them to be. That is not to be, of course, but there’s no use pretending.

And on that basis, we can look at the highest mountain of them all in module design – Mount Gygax, of the killer slopes and hidden caves – and see that the peak is missing. The other mountains still tremble in their millennia-long movements, though, as they go under the shadow of the giant.

POSTSCRIPT: A strange complexity of Gary’s module-writing career is that it did not end in 1985. His later works are still essentially written for D&D – very obviously when written for Swords & Sorcery, or Castles & Crusades, but just as much when written for Dangerous Journeys or Lejendary Adventures, his own successor games. And his later works are not solely edits or slight expansions of his early hits (as is mostly the case with his co-DM Rob Kuntz). Necropolis was published in the early 90s and published for DJ; his LA adventures come out as new cloth in the early 00s; and though Castle Zagyg is plainly a new take on Castle Greyhawk (with a tragicomic note, its publication never got beyond the Upper Works due to Gary’s death) and is indeed a co-written project, that was something Gary was working on in the last couple of years of his life.

I think I may spend some time on reviewing these later works, dressed up for different games, representing the changes in Gary’s own philosophy, but nonetheless recognizably the work of the author of that iconic introduction to B2: “...your fate is in your hands, for better or worse.”

Gygax Time Machine, Part 2: Character Creation and Class Distinctiveness

The first couple of weeks of “sessions” – in fact, multiple 30-60 minute sessions each week, in the evening after putting the kids to bed, sorting any extra food, and doing some household jobs – saw my wife and I create 1^st Edition characters and throw them into the World of Greyhawk. What I’ll try to discuss herein is our experience of character creation, and next time I’ll look at the module I picked and the first adventures.

So, character creation. Helen created three PCs, I created four – hers to command, but I’d do the admin and run them. Of course the very oldest-school answer here would have been to make her gather some henchmen and hirelings, but in a duet game, ensuring the player has loyal allies to rely upon – at least in a team game like D&D – is valuable. I actually ended up not using any of the official Ability-generating methods in the DMG or UA, but rather 4d6 in order, keeping the highest 3 dice. I rolled a number of arrays – 10 or so, I think, for the first seven characters we created, with the lamest of those sheets being dropped into the void.

My wife created a Druid (because the stat requirements were reached!), a Fighter, and a Thief, and I added a Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, and Thief to that. I wrote up the character sheets, and custom-formatted them in Word as we went, which may seem insanely inefficient, but is a way I’ve always found useful in learning game rules. When you’re forced to churn through everything a character has or does, you get a much better impression of what the game consists of – though you don’t necessarily get a complete grasp on “what’s good”, which depends on how adventures or whatever are designed.

Things that struck me in character creation: (1) how it rewarded a systematic approach; (2) how it suffered, as everything in 1e does, from the disorganised nature of the rulebooks – less bad than their worst detractors claim, but bad enough at points; and (3) how enjoyable it was.

The first point only really applies to me learning the character creation system, and the derived stats – a player using a automated sheet wouldn’t need to be as systematic as I was, and if given an Idiot’s Guide would, I think, get through it all fairly quickly (as quickly, if not quicker, than a 5e character, though in general terms it’s simpler to make a 5e character).

The second is exemplified by the need to discover encumbrance. You might as well do it at character creation, as that’s where you discover your Strength bonus to your carry limit, and where you buy equipment. But where do you find out item weights? Well, page 37 of the Player’s Handbook, after the equipment price list (which is perfectly well-presented), has “Weight and Damage By Type” for melee weapons and for ammunition, with weight in Gold Pieces; page 27 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide has the weights of armour, in Pounds; the weight of common items such as flasks, grapnels etc is on page 225 of the DMG, with weight in Gold Pieces...oh, and missile weapons are listed on that mundane items list in the DMG, too. Three pages across two books, two of the references being in a book the players shouldn’t have access to. This is, obviously, terrible organisation, and wait – we’ve got two different measurement systems, and we haven’t even learned how Encumbrance works or affects anything, which is all explained on pp101-102 of the PHB. And carry capacity for containers is in none of the corebooks, but instead, apparently, on the Character Record Sheets (I got capacities from a useful website).

Encumbrance is actually a brilliant and worthwhile mechanic in 1e, where Gold=XP (hence gold pieces weight as one of the two measurements – with 10gp=1#). Far from being pointless maths, it informs not only movement rates, but a far wider strategic part of the game – what do you take to the dungeon, knowing you need stuff to solve problems, whilst still having space to carry back all-important loot. (Hmm, this 5gp weight gem worth 500gp is much lighter than 500gp in coins...and 500gp in gold coins is much lighter than the equivalent in silver, which is 10,000sp.) And I have to say having to search through the books has familiarised me with a lot of the rules in greater depth than before. But it’s not a way to encourage players to persevere with the system!

But my third point was how enjoyable character creation was. There’s not much heavy customization at 1^st Level aside from equipment purchases – Fighters choose Weapon Specialisation (per UA, and my sense from researching people’s very mixed views is that it’s nowhere near as unbalancing as is claimed, at least over the course of a campaign), and that’s more or less it. Obviously you pick Ancestry and Class, but beyond that a lot of the stats-side of things is automatic – Thief Skills are generated by Ancestry and Abilities, Magic-User and Illusionist spells are randomly generated (the DMG method is plainly better, and I defend the use of randomization here; we played BTB rather than letting the M-U pick), and so forth. Partly, the lack of customization was part of the fun; seeing the character take form emergently was interesting. It also wasn’t all that painful, once I’d done it a couple of times – as I say above, the process itself isn’t super-complicated, if explained concisely.

The differences between Ancestries and between Classes begin to really come out at character creation – in one sense, in many of the same ways that Classes are differentiated in some later editions, most obviously 3^rd or 5^th (2^nd, obviously, is vastly more similar to 1^st anyway). However, when I look at 5^th, and at the relative robustness of every class (max HP per starting HD, 1^st HD is d6 for Wizards/Sorcerers), at the cross-over between every class (Eldritch Knight Fighter, Hexblade Warlocks, and Arcane Trickster Rogue are a good trio to compare), at the universal set of skills all character share, which are modified generously by Abilities...there is much less differentiation in 5e than in 1e. Yes, lots of people could have told you that, but I’m telling you. And differentiation is fun. Characters needing each other is fun.

You actually see this when browsing through spells – 1e spells are often, meta-to-meta, better than their 5e equivalents, and are much more sharply distinguished by class. This sounds surprising. Surely 5e is the Generous Old-School-Feel Edition; PCs, especially from 3^rd level, seem invincible, everyone gets a prize, etc. But just compare parallel spells:

(a)    5e’s Protection from Energy - 3^rd level Druid spell, casting time 1 action (main component of a 6-second round), 1 target, duration 1 hour, requires caster Concentration (which can be broken), damage of the chosen elemental type is halved.

(b)   1e’s Protection from Fire (3^rd level), Protection from Lightning (4^th level) – Both Druid spells, casting time 5 segments (30 seconds of a 60-second round), 1 target, no Concentration required. Duration differs – for the Druid, it’s infinite until magical damage breaks it. For other targets, it’s (10 minutes x Druid level). The effect, for the Druid, is that they are immune to all normal damage from that element, and can soak up to (12 damage x Druid level) of magical damage before the spell is broken. For other targets, they gain immunity to normal element damage, gain +4 to Saves vs magical attacks requiring saves, and magical damage is halved for the duration.

Sure, in 5^th Edition, there’s much less opportunity cost for memorizing Protection from Energy, but it’s also really not very good. Its casting time is fine, it covers more damage types than the 1e equivalents, and halving said damage type is good, but it requires Concentration, thereby sucking up the Druid’s ability to cast other big spells, and halving damage – in 5^th – is not a massive effect for a 3^rd level spell slot. It has a very niche use if buffing a big guy for a one-on-one battle with a dragon or something. I have never seen it used in my experience of 5^th, over several campaigns involving Druids.

On the other hand, Protection from Fire and Lightning are both good spells. Fire is hardly uncommon! As a self-targeted spell, it’s an incredible defence for the Druid – immunity to normal instances of the damage type in perpetuity, at least until such time as the Druid takes sufficient magical damage. At lower levels, that will range from 36 points at 3^rd Level, to 72 at, say, 6^th Level. By 5^th or 6^th level, the Druid will regularly be able to soak the full brunt of a dragon’s breath attack, one of the most reliable killers in 1^st Edition. And remember – though the duration is shorter for the Druid casting the spell on someone else, it has the same mundane fire protection, and some healthy assistance on magical damage. A 54-damage breath attack could be halved once via a successful Save vs Breath Weapon (at +4 due to the spell), and then halved again by the soak element of the spell. 14 damage is often survivable for a 4^th-6^th level character. There’s a reason these spells often poll highly in “best Druid spells” lists for 1^st Edition.

There are two significant balancing factors, demonstrative of the 1^st Edition mindset: you memorize individual spells for use, not a spell list for fungible use, so if the spell is poorly chosen, that’s a slot wasted for the period (12 hours including rest needed to memorize a new 3^rd level spell, if my memory serves). And casting times make casters more vulnerable to interruption and wasted spell slots in 1^st Edition – 5 segments means there’s time for opponents to hit the Druid, cause the spell to fail, with the spell slot lost.

The 5^th Edition player cannot mitigate how lame Protection from Energy is. Concentration is very vulnerable to interruption, and the typical 5e battlefield means the Druid is unlikely to hide in the corner or be protected by others for the hour of casting! But in 1^st Edition, what mitigates the costs is player skill. Cast it before you enter the Blue Dragon’s lair. If an emergency cast is required, set the Fighters to intercept any attacks. You learn when to use the spells by playing the game; you learn their specific but very powerful use through experience. 5^th Edition cushions the capacity for failure due to poor decisions, but also reduces the scope for great skill in play; 1^st Edition stays Safety Off on both.

And only the Druid has those spells. 5^th Edition subclasses press down a lot of this distinctiveness; 1^st Edition presses into them. These differences are all over the place, from the way only the Fighter gains a proficiency bonus to weapon use (rather than simply avoiding a penalty for non-proficiency), to only the Thief having specialist stealth and legerdemain skills. Now, much of this is similar in B/X, but there are more specialised variables in AD&D (such as Ancestry-specific class restrictions and special abilities), and the mechanics provided are never bland, even if they are abstruse. They are all opportunities for player skill in the simulation provided by Gary. 

So Prince Perithil of the Amber Wood (High Elf Thief), Kurgan Ironbreath (Dwarf Cleric), Gilayra (Half-Elf Druid), Gragnak (Half-Orc Fighter), Throli (Dwarf Fighter), Eldarion (Half-Elf Magic-User), and Timtom (Human Thief) set forth, seeking glory, justice, and wealth, or some mixture thereof. Oh, and two of them managed to roll to have Psionics! We’ll talk about that another time.

Gygax Time Machine, Part 1: Why 1st Edition?

 “If the player characters are not of the same stamp as Conan, they also appreciate that they are in effect writing their own adventures and creating their own legends, not merely reliving those of someone else’s creation.” – E. Gary Gygax, Dungeon Master’s Guide p80

Why play 1^st Edition D&D? Aren’t there more editions because the 1^st wasn’t good enough? And hey, I’ve looked at the books – they’re sooo confusingly organised. And some of the rules are pointless – who would bother with Weapon Speed Factor?

Inspired by Anthony Huso (http://thebluebard.com), writer of various excellent modules, I’m running a 1^st Edition AD&D campaign by the book (BTB) during the Lockdown. I’m usually a fairly relaxed DM, rules-wise – happy to make rulings on the fly to ensure the world is more coherent. Rules are tools. And for D&D, I usually run 5^th Edition or some version of the classic Basic set. So why 1^st Edition? And why BTB?

Partly, it’s just Tony’s infectious enthusiasm, his quest to understand Gary Gygax’s vision of the first fantasy roleplaying game. What would happen if we just trusted the rules, and assumed there was some reason for them, and gave them the good old college try? If they are really so archaic or bad, it’s hard to understand how they coincided with the real glory years of D&D’s creativity and growth (say 1978-1985).

In part there’s a taste issue – what sort of RPG do you want to play? What sort of RPG is 1^st Edition?

1^st Edition has particular assumptions that begin to be rejected even before the end of its own decade in publication. 1^st Edition doesn’t encourage big structured narratives where the players participate in a pre-existing “legendary story”, rather aiming for such narratives to emerge through play; it assumes emergent gameplay, randomization, and a relatively serious adherence to rules and procedure will produce the best expression of the game; dice-rolling is actually, surprisingly, fairly circumscribed in its efficacy compared to pure player skill, with “Non-Weapon Proficiencies” (basically, dice-based skills to use outside of the dungeon environment) only appearing late in its run and in association with a setting that has a very different feel. These were all assumptions or models that were, in large part, undercut by the mid 80s. Narrative modules like the Dragonlance series became very popular; heavy scripting of environments and a diminution of emergence therefore becomes more prevalent; and dice-rolling, rather than player decision or skill, becomes more important.

So why am I saying 1^st Edition is to my taste? I’ve long enjoyed emergent gameplay via randomization and an emphasis on player skill, but some would argue these are as well if not better served by simpler descendants of D&D – essentially, spin-offs of Basic/Expert, not Advanced. To quote a very talented designer of one of these hacks in his latest book: “This is a game to be played, not a textbook to be studied. It’s designed for the game table, not the library. Rules are false idols, numbers are rarely the answer, and plain speech always beats specialist terminology.” How could one disagree? Especially paired with the inclusive view of the game table that immediately follows this – wanting to welcome those who “don’t want to learn complex rules” – how could one be so churlish as to say: (1) no, rules may be bad gods but they are good governments; (2) numbers are often the answer; and (3) specialist terminology has a great deal of utility. Isn’t that all very exclusive?

Well, I want everyone to enjoy the games they enjoy. I’m not interested in a Bad Wrong Fun War. But aside from the archaeological and artistic aspects of playing 1^st Edition, it is also the version of D&D best set up, in my judgement, to produce exactly the kind of epic-but-player-generated stories Gary envisioned the game as concerning. How do all the complex rules help this? Well, tellingly, the quote I opened with is from the section in the DMG on Saving Throws. It is by way of justifying Gary’s assertion that “because the player character is all-important, he or she must always – or nearly always – have a chance”, no matter how impossible the Saving Throw situation seems. The player characters are the subject of the story, not whatever the DM creates; the dense rules, from how to generate animal populations of an area to the lengthy tables of different types of gems, are all there to provide for that end. We’ll get back to that.

Another telling point is how often, explicitly or implicitly, the mechanics of the game are supposed to be hidden from the players. The combat tables and the rules for magic items are in the DMG, and players are told not to read that book. The game is significantly playable – as in some of the earliest D&D games – with the DM rolling virtually all of the dice, whilst the players simply make decisions. There is meant to be a vast substructure of rules beneath what the players need to learn from the Player’s Handbook – which, aside from character creation and spell rules, has really only an overview of the rules, plus some very good advice on how to play. Isn’t this strange? There are meant to be a great many rules to facilitate player-driven stories, but by default the players aren’t allowed to know most of them.

There is an interesting answer to our talented critic’s concern about rules and numbers here, isn’t there? To play 1^st Edition, players are *not* expected to know a great number of rules, especially if they are playing non-spellcasters. Once character creation is over (which is at times a dense process, I grant), Fighters only really need to know their Attacks Per Round and the advantages and disadvantages their weapons have vs different ACs and monster sizes. Thieves have a single list of percentage specialist skills, for which they do not roll the dice to check success. Of course, the good player will learn their character sheet inside out, and squeeze every advantage from their skillset – but that is not a requirement to begin play. 1^st Edition AD&D is an inductive game, where one learns by playing.

But why, then, is the DM expected to learn three rulebooks worth of material? Surely you could have the above situation of how many rules a player needs to know, and then add a couple more rules the DM needs to know, and that could be enough for a good game.

But what if I said – and I am not the first to say so – that 1^st Edition AD&D is not a game in the usual sense? What if I told you it was really a simulation of being a fantasy adventurer? Boardgame wargamers have the specialist term “consim” – conflict simulation. Those who delve into this most arcane and abstruse version of D&D need, perhaps, a term of their own. Fansim? Herosim? Dunsim?

There are assumptions in this Fansim that may jar with our own sense of “fantasy reality”. Gold = XP and Saving Throws in seemingly impossible situations are both rules Gary takes the time to justify because of this. However, they fit the paradigm of the simulation Gary is offering. The detailed information about stocking environments is so that the DM knows whether Conjure Animals works, and what are likely random encounters, and so forth. The lists of gems are important because gems weigh much less than gold pieces, and are much more valuable – and so having a variety helps both as monetary denominators (because Gold = XP AND is indispensable for building strongholds, paying hirelings, and affording training to level up), and for flavour. Why are there 12 Ornamental Stones, 13 Semi-Precious, 14 Fancy, and 14 Gem Stones? So that your players aren’t bored by the loot they accumulate. “Star Sapphire: transluscent sapphire with white ‘star’ center”.

All those tables enrich the world. They are DM-facing because of course they are – the DM’s job is to create a rich, absorbing world in which the players lose themselves as they create their legend. And all of the crunchy rules exist for the same purpose – often out of player sight, but like the complex code behind rich fantasy RPG video game, they enable it all to happen and feel real. The very granular To Hit and Saving Throw tables allow real variance in how situations unfold; the Potion Miscibility Table lets you check whether drinking all those powerful magical drugs together goes bad; the organizational charts for groups of hirelings and henchmen ensure that your employment decisions don’t challenge belief in the world; and the *17* Appendices in the DMG, covering everything from Traps to Herbs to Describing Magical Substances, and most famously Appendix N, on “Inspirational and Educational Reading”, all serve the make the world deep.

That’s why “By The Book” also matters – not that the Book won’t sometimes fail and need interpretation or correction, but that the Book is the World, and to inhabit the World offered by 1^st Edition, by Gary Gygax, means inhabiting the Book rather than (in this situation) writing your own.

Rules are the coding of a world. When executed faithfully in depth, they create a world of unsurpassed verisimilitude – because a world is engaging for players not because they have read the hefty background tomes sold at substantial cost by the RPG company, but because they have explored and inhabited and changed the world. Numbers are the fine details. When randomized, they prevent the DM from forcing a story upon his players.  Specialist terminology is necessary when describing a wide and deep array of rules; computer programmers don’t tend to call parts of their work “thingummies”.

Yes, it’s mathsy. Yes, it demands a lot of DM. Yes, it’s a hard ride for players who don’t want to learn. It’s not for everyone. It is for me.